


Contingency

by besselfcn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Sickfic, just reaper things, light body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 02:04:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15876222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Maybe it was all leading here, in the end. To this. To a cold bathroom floor and a body that is his and not-his.But how’s he supposed to tell McCree about that? About any of it? Where the hell would he even start?





	Contingency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crookedfingers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedfingers/gifts).



> For crook, who requested sickfic. I guess this technically counts!!

“Hey,” he hears Jesse call through the paper-thin bathroom door. “You alright in there, Boss?”

Gabriel wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and tries not to look. “Yeah,” he calls back, wincing at the rasping of his voice. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

There’s a pause. Gabriel takes the opportunity to push himself up off the tile floor and flush the toilet. Even gets the sink running before Jesse speaks again.

“If you’re sure,” he says.

Gabriel makes the mistake of looking down into the sink as he washes his hands. It’s just a few drops--the residue off his lips--but they seem to expand in the water, an impossible ink cloud.

He jabs the faucet off and dries his hands on a towel that he dumps into the trash.

When he throws the door open, Jesse does his best to look like he didn’t have his ear pressed against it.

“I’m sure,” Gabriel snaps. “It’s fine, McCree.”

\--

Over the next few weeks, Gabriel does what he can to press it down. Throws himself into Blackwatch; spends more and more nights sleeping on his own; even schedules a new appointment with Moira, to her nauseating delight.

It works well enough, for a while. Enough not to attract many more questions, so long as he keeps to himself. And if sometimes he finds himself coughing until his mouth tastes like ash, he’s good enough at swallowing it down.

McCree still looks at him sideways, sometimes, especially when he catches him hacking up a lung. He’s got half a mind to tell McCree to mind his damn business, but, hell. Knowing him, it’d only encourage him.

So he doesn’t say anything. He lets it build--this _problem_ , this cough, this inevitability. He spends nights in the training room, focusing on his next breath. Days in his office, reading. And not much in between.

He thinks there’s a chance it might all come to a head when they’re sent to an away mission in Numbani, but he’s privately field-cleared by O’Deorain the night before take-off. _You’re looking much more stable, Gabriel_ , she tells him, in that half-amused tone, and he can’t tell whether he’s being mocked. He chooses to err on the side of caution and assume he is.

All the same, though, it chews away at the back of his mind. And so before he can think about it too much--before he can back out, really--he calls Jesse to his room the night after they arrive on the dropship.

(“Formal or informal meeting, sir?” Jesse’d asked, with a wink.

“Formal,” Gabriel had sighed, and he’d rarely seen the kid look so deflated.)

The speech he gives when Jesse arrives is one he’s had canned for a while. Sentences starting with words like _if anything happens_ and _it’s your responsibility to_ and _Blackwatch needs someone like you_.

“Due respect, sir,” Jesse says, like he’s ever given that in his life. “Why the fuck are you tellin’ me this? Something wrong?”

“No,” Gabriel snaps. “It’s a precaution. It’s important to have a contingency plan, especially an organization as sensitive as Blackwatch.”

He feels like he owes it to Jesse to look him in the eyes when he says it, even though he feels like it might punch holes right through his skull.

“And I’m sure you’d tell me if something were amiss I should know about,” Jesse says carefully. God, the way that mouth of his drips acid sometimes.

“If you need to know, you’d know,” Gabriel answers.

“Course I would.”

Gabriel sighs.

Jesse’s standing before him all taut muscles and clenched teeth. He doesn’t need that, now. Doesn’t need that on the field. He needs the crack shot, the vigilante.

“McCree,” he says, slowly undoing the buttons of his own shirt. Jesse eyes him with a hungry stare. “It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Jesse says, through the growing smirk on his mouth. He begins undoing that god-awful belt. “Okay.”

\--

Of course it’s not fine.

It hasn’t been _fine_ for weeks. Months? _Years?_

Since Moira’s lab. Since SEP. Since the first rattle of gunfire that Gabriel had ever heard. Maybe it was all leading here, in the end. To this. To a cold bathroom floor and a body that is his and not-his.

But how’s he supposed to tell McCree about that? About any of it? Where the hell would he even start?

\--

“Reyes,” Jesse moans, and Gabriel’s got a hand fisted through his hair, body weight pressed on his shoulder blades, “Reyes, oh, fuck, oh, God,” and Gabriel knows he doesn’t have to start anywhere, doesn’t have to tell him anything, he’ll take what he’s given and beg for just-that-much and that’s the beauty, the magic, the sanctity of Jesse McCree.

\--

That night he dreams of smoke.

\--

_He’s floating--maybe. Or he’s sinking. It all seems like the same thing, when there’s no gravity to hold him down, no glue to hold him together. An ice-cold tendril of wind snakes through the room and he feels himself caught up in it, absorbed, spilled back out onto the tile and maybe, maybe, if he lets himself go he can just--dissolve--away--_

Boss _, and he hears it in every molecule of his body, this warbled plea, the way it tastes like fear coming off those lips, and maybe he should say something but there’s not enough of him, not now_.

Boss _, it says again, and some of what used to be him curls around those ankles, electrified at the feeling of flesh and bone and reality_ come on now _it doesn’t hurt anymore_ come back here, Reyes.

Reyes. _Like a knife wound_.

 _Reyes_. _Like a whip shot. Like the crack of a gun._

He falls back together, water poured into a bucket.

And Jesse’s standing there, gun drawn, trained on what had been left of Gabriel’s body, other hand so tense at his side that his knuckles are white and his face looks about the same.

“Now,” Jesse rasps. “Don’t you go telling me it’s _fine_ no more.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [McReyes Charity Week 2018](https://twitter.com/mcreyes4charity). It's been a blast!


End file.
